In the Garden: A Good Friday Responsive Reading

Beavercreek Nazarene Lent 2013 Sermon Series - Venom

The following is a responsive reading written to be used in the Good Friday gathering that concludes our Venom sermon series. The Pastor(s) read the plain text, and the congregation responds with the bold text.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth.

And God saw that it was very good.

God created you, humankind, in God’s image. God’s way for you was simple:

Be fruitful and multiply. Till and keep the garden.

And do not eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Do not try to make your own Way.

But one day, you were walking together in the garden. You were near that forbidden Tree, and a serpent got your attention.

[Pastor1:]  “Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?”

It’s only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not allowed to eat. God said, ‘If you do, you will die.

[Pastor1]:  You won’t die! God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.

You craved the wisdom the fruit would give you. You wanted to be like God, to take God’s place. You wanted to recreate the world in your own image. So you ate the fruit.

Immediately, you knew what you’d done. So you hid.

You were still hiding when God came looking for you.

[Pastor2]:  Where are you? Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?

Men:  It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it.

Women:  The serpent deceived me. That’s why I ate it.

[Pastor2]: You were told to be fruitful and multiply. Now childbirth will cause you terrible pain. You were told to till the garden and keep it. Now the ground will produce thorns and thistles for you. You were created in my image, but now you are bent away from me, and your sin spreads into the whole world.

Now the whole world is trapped in Sin. Our pain doesn’t come from God’s Way.

The problem is us, for we are all too human, slaves to sin.

I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate.

I want to do what is right, but I can’t. I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. 

I have discovered this principle of life– that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong.

I love God’s law with all my heart. But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. 

This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me.

What miserable people we are! Who will free us from this life that is dominated by sin and death?

In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was there in the beginning with God, creating that perfect world we lost.

The Word became human and moved into our neighborhood.

The Word was a new Adam. The Word succeeded where we failed. The Word never listened to the words of the serpent.

God made the Word, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God.

Jesus, the Word of God, told us that as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. Behold your savior, lifted up on a cross. He has become your Sin, your pride, your rebellion. He has taken your place.

What miserable people we are! Who will free us from this life that is dominated by sin and death?

Thanks be to God, that Jesus, the Word of God has died to free you from sin and death.

All of us have sinned. We’ve all fallen short of God’s glory.

Behold the one who has never sinned, who has become your sin.

The wages of Sin is Death.

Behold the one who has died in your place, who receives the consequences of your choices.

Have mercy on us, God, according to your unfailing love.

Turn away from your Sin. Repent and follow God!

Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Opening the Front Door, Closing the Back Door – Herbert Cooper

Seven keys to Opening the Front Door

Herbert Cooper1. Use weekend worship gatherings

Remember that every Sunday is someone’s first Sunday. The regular attendee’s perspective changes when they invite someone to a gathering.

Focus on relevant + practical teaching.

Ensure that your programming is excellent. Excellence eliminates distractions.

2. Get your people fired up to reach their friends & family

In everything you do, build trust with attendees.

Honest evaluations are vital. Every church suffers from “Insiderness“. A church’s natural gravitational pull is inward.

One of my # 1 jobs is to keep the church’s focus outward.

3. Kids and Student Ministry can be front doors

Invest in these key ministries with money and quality volunteers

4. Build a Front Door Team

This can be either Staff or Volunteers.

Focus on the Front Door before Back Door. Create some chaos, then figure out how to manage it.

5. Facilities can open the Front Door.

Facilities can facilitate momentum (Not create. If you don’t already have some momentum, a new facility will be a burden, not a boon.)

6. Adding Gatherings can open the Front Door

New gatherings create growth, excitement and momentum. Starting new gatherings on-site has huge advantages over starting a new site.

  1. Serve 1, worship 1: Multiple gatherings = opportunities serve. At People’s Church, those who worship in one gathering volunteer in Kids Church during another gathering.
  2. More gatherings means more opportunities to serve means people commit and take ownership.
  3. Financially it’s possibly more responsible to maximize what you already have.

7. Eliminate Excuses and Lead

Our job as leaders is to take them where they NEED to go moth here they WANT to go.

Don’t say, “Our people won’t _________.” The truth is, we as leaders haven’t led them to ______. One of our greatest weaknesses is that we don’t take our responsibility.

Shutting the Back Door

Catalyst Make1. Follow Up.

Follow Up starts on Sunday. It starts in the parking lot. Most people decide if they teaming back within the first 5-10 minutes of their visit.

2. Make the Next step clear

Do we know what our Next Step is?

Do our visitors know what the Next Step is?

People need to be needed & known (in other words, get new persons Serving and connected in a Small Group).

YOUR TURN: What are your church’s areas of greatest need? What can you do next?

The Revelation to JR. – Two Witnesses

This series of posts is my attempt to demonstrate that the language of the Revelation was actually symbolic code that was very intelligible to a first-century Jewish Christian living in the Roman Empire.  I’m re-writing the Revelation to communicate the same message, but to a twenty-first century American Christian audience, using symbols we understand.  This particular section parallels Revelation chapter 11.  If you want to catch up, here’s a PDF of the entire series so far: The Revelation to JR – Chapters 1-11.

Then I was given a tool belt and a steel beams and I was told:

Come and reinforce God’s sanctuary – include the pulpit and everyone worshiping in there.  But don’t bother with the foyer or classroom space.  All that’s being handed over to the rest of the world.  They’re going to run rampant all over the holy city for 42 months.

I’m going to give my two eye-witnesses authority to prophesy for 1,260 days while they’re dressed for a funeral.

Continue reading

The Executive Order

This series of posts is my attempt to demonstrate that the language of the Revelation was actually symbolic code that was very intelligible to a first-century Jewish Christian living in the Roman Empire.  I’m re-writing the Revelation to communicate the same message, but to a twenty-first century American Christian audience, using symbols we understand.  This particular section parallels Revelation chapter 10.  If you want to catch up, here’s a PDF of the entire series so far: The Revelation to JR – Chapters 1-10.

I saw another enormous angel coming down from heaven.  He was wrapped in a cloud and I saw a rainbow appear over his head.  I could barely look at him because his face was as bright as the sun and even his legs and feet burned like fire.  He had an Executive Order in his right hand (it looked so small in his huge hand!).  He planted one foot on the land and one in the ocean and then yelled at the top of his lungs.

When he yelled, I heard a giant roar, like seven jet engines.  I was about to write down what I heard in the engines’ roar, but someone up in heaven said

“Seal up what the seven jet engines have said – don’t write it down!”

Continue reading

The Three Curses

This series of posts is my attempt to demonstrate that the language of the Revelation was actually symbolic code that was very intelligible to a first-century Jewish Christian living in the Roman Empire.  I’m re-writing the Revelation to communicate the same message, but to a twenty-first century American Christian audience, using symbols we understand.  This particular section parallels Revelation chapter 9.  If you want to catch up, here’s a PDF of the entire series so far: The Revelation to JR – 1-9.

The fifth angel turned on his camera and I saw a star that had fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key the bowels of the earth.  He opened it and smoke came billowing out of the hole like from a blown radiator.  The smoke covered the sky and plunged the whole planet into darkness.

Then I saw locusts emerge from the smoke, and they were given authority like soldiers.  They were specifically told not to harm the crops or food supply, but instead to hurt anyone who hadn’t been notarized by God on their heads and wallets.  They were allowed to torture them for five months, but not to kill them.  And it was bad –  worse than anything that went down in Guantanamo Bay.  During those five months, people will try to kill themselves – they’ll chase after death – but they won’t be able to die.Continue reading

The Press Conference

This series of posts is my attempt to demonstrate that the language of the Revelation was actually symbolic code that was very intelligible to a first-century Jewish Christian living in the Roman Empire.  I’m re-writing the Revelation to communicate the same message, but to a twenty-first century American Christian audience, using symbols we understand.  This particular section parallels Revelation chapter 8.  If you want to catch up, here’s a PDF of the entire series so far: The Revelation to JR – 1-8.

When the Lamb signed the seventh line on the Order, there was utter silence in heaven for about half an hour.  Then I saw the seven angels who comprise God’s cabinet, and they were given seven news cameras.

Another angel with a golden coffee cup came and stood at the podium.  He was given gallons of coffee to place along with the prayers of all the saints on the golden podium that stands in front of the desk.  The aroma of the coffee, along with the saints’ prayers, rose up to God from the angel’s hand.  Then the angel took the coffee cup and filled it with boiling coffee from the podium and threw it down onto the earth, and when he did, I saw lightning flash, heard thunder crash and saw a massive earthquake.Continue reading

Jesus on Fire and Holy Prayer Grenades

Once I preached at a church on worship.  After my talk, we entered into a period of reflection and prayer, and a couple approached the altar.  The husband moved behind the pulpit, reached under it and pulled out a rock.  He placed it on the altar, then he and his wife knelt near it and prayed; they were quickly joined by other members of the congregation.

Needless to say, I was confused – what was the purpose of the stone?  I thought it was perhaps a sign that a person wanted prayer – put the stone out and it means ‘Come pray with me’; leave it hidden and it means ‘I want to pray alone’.

A good guess, perhaps, but incorrect.  After the gathering was finished, the man came up to me to explain that he was about to attend a prayer gathering at a nearby farm – the same farm from which he’d removed the rock.  He told me that he was going to return the rock “once it was good and prayed up.”  Apparently, the man envisioned the rock as some sort of Christian fetish – a religious term for a physical object believed to have spiritual power.

He believed that in some way the prayers with which he and his congregation had filled the rock would enhance the prayer gathering.

I was reminded of the prayer rock last Monday when we found out that the (in)famous “Touchdown Jesus” in Monroe, OH had been struck by lightning and burned to the ground (check out the YouTube footage of the conflagration in progress).

 

The statue was built in 2004 in front of the Solid Rock Church; it stands 62-feet tall and was made of plaster and styrofoam around a metal frame.

Reaction to the flames was mixed – in my circles we mostly laughed about it, but a lot of people apparently found the statue inspiring.  One guy even said, “I think it’s a sign of the end of the world.  If lightning is going to strike God, then there’s no hope.”  Probably the most common sentiment I heard is represented best by the guy who asked how God could strike down the Jesus statue while leaving the billboard advertising an adult bookstore that stood across the street standing.

Everyone wanted to know what God is saying by striking down Touchdown Jesus.  This thinking is still essentially fetish-ism.  Solid Rock Church built a 60-foot tall statue with a metal core.  Said metal core was struck by lightning, and since the material surrounding the  metal were flammable, it caught fire.  This is simple laws of physics.

What it is not is God taking a special interest in a five-year old giant Jesus.

My favorite reaction?  A person said, "Thor: 1.  Jesus: 0".

The Scriptures present God as transcendent – above creation and separate from it.  The second commandment (you know, in the big 10) is a prohibition against building idols.  But idols in the ancient world were not things people worship instead of God (the way we usually explain idolatry today) – that prohibition is covered in the first commandment, “I am YHWH your god… You shall have no other gods before me.”

Rather, idols were used to bind gods to physical spaces.  Thus, when the Israelites built the golden calf (Exodus 32), they were not worshiping the calf instead of God.  Rather, they were binding God to the calf – bulls were used as mounts for gods in many Ancient Near Eastern temples.  Thus, telling someone not to value his car more than God, or her romantic relationship more than God is not idolatry; it’s worship of the god of Consumerism or Romance (Mammon or Aphrodite, perhaps?)

God’s prohibition against idols is a command not to bind God to any created form, not to limit God by any physical space.

And in this way, I wonder if the prayer rock and Touchdown Jesus have become idols to some.  They are not essentially idols – we can use physical objects to help us focus or to draw us towards God in our worship.  But the prayer rock was not being charged with prayers to enhance our worship.  He wanted to ensure that God did more, that God was more present at the gathering because of the prayer rock.  The person who questions what message God is sending with a statue-destroying, porn-affirming bolt seems to think God has some sort of obligation to protect images of Godself (ironic, that) while destroying what the person in question considers obscene.

And that is idolatry.  God is not bound to prayer rocks or giant statues of the incarnation.  And God does not make a habit (at least in my knowledge) of breaking the laws of physics in order to protect our ill-advised mistakes.  I wonder, though, if this yearning to have a physical connection with our faith reflects the extent to which our faith has become interior and spiritual to the exclusion of any affirmation of our real world and real bodies.

What do you think?  Is the burning of Touchdown Jesus a sign?  Can you charge rocks up with prayer?  And what do these ideas say about contemporary Evangelical Christianity?  Most importantly, how should Christians engage in this discussion?